Open a bag that has been zipped shut since Tuesday and the smell is not coming from the jersey. The jersey washes fine. Hockey gear is mostly foam and closed cell padding, it soaks up everything a session puts into it, it never dries properly inside a closed bag, and it sits in the dark holding all of it until the next skate.
What in a bag of hockey gear goes in a machine
Empty the whole bag onto the floor first, because the sorting is the part most people get wrong.
Jerseys, socks, base layers, practice shirts and jocks are ordinary laundry and go in a machine without any argument.
Shoulder pads, elbow pads, shin guards and pants are machine washable in most cases, but that depends on the maker and the model. The label or the manufacturer site settles it, and a general assumption does not.
Gloves are hand cleaned in practice, whatever a label may permit, because the palm material and the internal padding do not come through a full cycle in one piece.
Helmets never go in a machine. The shell, the liner, the cage and the hardware are a certified assembly, and washing one can change the fit and compress the foam that makes the fit work.
Skates never go in either. Water sitting in the boot, the rivets and the steel is how skates rust and how a boot loses its shape.
Sort into three piles. Machine, hand, and wipe and air. The rest of the job follows from those three piles.
The soft goods, which are the easy half
Jerseys go in inside out on a cold or warm gentle cycle, and a mesh bag keeps the numbers and the stitched twill from catching on anything.
Wash them separately from household laundry, since hockey gear has no business sharing a drum with everyday clothes.
Socks are usually a knit that snags, so those want a bag as well.
Base layers are synthetic, and synthetic holds odour far more readily than cotton does. A cold wash with a normal dose of detergent and a full extra rinse does more for them than a hot wash, and hot water tends to set odour into polyester rather than release it.
No fabric softener on anything technical. It leaves a coating on the fibre, cuts the wicking, and gives odour somewhere comfortable to sit.
Hang them rather than tumbling them where there is time, since dryer heat is hard on printed numbers and on elastic waistbands.
Pads, and the cycle that does not wreck them
Check the maker first, then run all the approved pads together in one load so the drum is full without being packed.
Undo every strap and press every hook and loop closure shut onto itself. Left open they grab whatever is next to them and tear it.
Cold water, gentle cycle, a small amount of liquid detergent, no bleach and no softener.
A front loading drum is much better here than a top loader with a centre post, which can take a strap off a shoulder pad in a single cycle.
Add an extra rinse. Detergent left inside foam is the reason pads come out stiff and start smelling again inside a week.
Never a dryer. Heat shrinks and hardens foam, softens the adhesive holding plastic caps onto the padding, and warps the plastic itself.
Air dry with every strap open and the pieces spread apart, and expect a day and a half rather than an evening. Foam holds water in the middle long after the outside feels dry, and hockey gear put back into a bag at ninety percent dry is worse off than gear that was never washed at all.
Gloves, which are the hardest item in the bag
Gloves are the worst smelling piece of hockey gear in the bag and also the least washable, which is an unfortunate combination.
The palm is leather or a synthetic suede, the back is foam and plastic under nylon, and a machine cycle hardens the palm and crushes the padding.
Hand clean instead. Cool water, a little mild detergent, worked into the palm and the cuff with a cloth or a soft brush.
Rinse by pressing clean water through them rather than leaving them submerged for an hour.
Press the water out gently, never wring them, and open the cuff out as wide as it goes.
Dry them on a rack or over the neck of a bottle with air moving through the cuff, and turn them once partway through.
Between sessions the only thing that helps is taking them out and opening them up. Gloves left inside a closed bag never dry, and everything else in the bag is then drying next to them.
Helmets and skates
A helmet gets wiped, not washed. A damp cloth with a little mild soap over the shell and the liner, a second cloth with plain water after it, then air drying with the cage off if it comes off easily.
Do not soak a helmet, do not put it near a heat source, and do not use solvents on the shell, which can weaken it.
Skates are dried rather than cleaned. Loosen the laces all the way, pull the tongue forward, and open the boot as wide as it will go after every session.
Wipe the blades and the holders dry before the skates go anywhere. Standing water is what pits steel and rusts rivets.
Take the footbeds out and dry them separately, because they hold more water than anything else inside the boot.
A boot dryer is the one heat source built for this and it runs barely warm. Anything hotter is how a boot loses its shape and how the adhesive in the sole lets go.
The bag itself, which almost nobody washes
The bag is the reason hockey gear cleaned in September smells the same in October as it did in August.
It holds moisture in the lining and along the seams, it stays closed for days at a stretch, and every clean piece of hockey gear that goes back in lands straight onto that.
Most bags are nylon or polyester and will take a cold gentle cycle, wheels and all, as long as the wheels are bolted rather than glued and the label does not rule it out.
Empty every pocket first. Tape, spare laces, a puck and half a water bottle come out of most of them.
Air dry it inside out and completely, with the mouth propped open so the inside gets air.
Between washes, unzip it fully and lay it open on its side rather than standing it upright, and never store it zipped shut in a cupboard or a car.
Airing after every session, which does more than washing
Washing hockey gear happens a few times a season. Airing happens after every session, and airing is what actually keeps a bag under control.
Take everything out. Every piece, every time, and the bag as well.
A drying rack built for this is worth having, and a plain clothes horse or a row of hangers in a garage does the same job for nothing.
Spread things apart instead of hanging them on top of each other, because airflow is the entire mechanism and contact points stay wet.
Point a fan at it if the space does not move air on its own. Two hours with a fan running does more than a warm still room does overnight.
Wash the soft goods after every session and the pads perhaps monthly, and the pads stay reasonable, because what keeps them reasonable is being dried rather than being washed more often.
The Indianapolis part
Ice time here runs from late summer through to spring, so hockey gear is in use for most of the year and there is no long stretch where it sits empty and dries out on its own. The airing has to be a weekly habit right through it rather than something done at the end of a season.
For a lot of families the gear lives in a car between sessions, and a car boot is close to the worst place a bag can be. It is sealed, no air moves through it, and it swings from cold to warm and back every day, which puts condensation on the inside of everything in there.
Cold is not a solution, and that is worth saying plainly, because a lot of people assume that leaving a bag out in an unheated garage in January handles the problem. Cold suppresses the smell while the gear is cold, and it does nothing at all to what is sitting in the foam. The moment it warms up, it is exactly where it was. Bring it inside, open it, and let it dry.
Winter also makes drying slower indoors than people expect, because a cold garage holds moisture in padding for days on end. Where the choice is a garage in February or a heated part of the house, use the house, put a fan on it and leave a door open. Gear that would have taken two days out there is done by morning.
Where a full set of pads actually fits
Pads need room to move in water, and a home drum with a post in the middle of it does not give them any.
The machines at our self-service laundry on West 71st Street run large drums with no centre agitator, so shoulder pads and shin guards tumble in real water volume rather than being packed against a post, and there is enough water in the rinse to carry detergent back out of the foam.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a laundry basics guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Sort the hockey gear out of the bag before anything else. Jerseys, socks and base layers are ordinary laundry, most pads are machine washable if the maker says so, and helmets, skates and gloves never are. Wash pads cold on a gentle cycle with a little liquid detergent, no softener, an extra rinse, straps fastened shut, and then air dry them for a day and a half, because heat destroys foam and adhesive. Hand clean gloves in cool water and open the cuffs to dry. Wash the bag too, since a damp bag recontaminates everything you just cleaned. The single biggest factor is emptying the bag and airing every piece after every session, with a fan if the room is still.
WaveMAX Indianapolis is at 2814 W. 71st Street, easy to reach from Indianapolis and the surrounding area. If you have bedding that will not fit at home, call us at 317-388-5954.